Featured photos

Canada got the last hurrah at the Celebration of Light Saturday evening, closing the three-night event with a winning display. Canada was declared the winner of the event, with Brazil and China finishing second and third, respectively.

Super-realistic tapestry of downtown Vancouver a five-year odyssey

Fibre artist Sola Fiedler had hoped to have artwork ready for the Olympics

Sola Fiedler on Aug. 28 with her new Vancouver Tapestry.

Photograph by: Kim Stallknecht
, Vancouver Sun

Sola Fiedler never imagined her Vancouver Tapestry would take so long to complete.

Fiedler started in 2009, intending to finish it for the 2010 Winter Olympics. But a repetitive strain injury caused by weaving forced her to stop for a year. When she returned to weaving, she did so carefully. To make sure she didn’t reinjure her shoulder, she only worked two hours a day rather than her usual eight.

Three weeks ago, she put the finishing touches on the tapestry of Vancouver that is 3.3 metres wide by 1.6 metres high. It’s being unveiled to the public today (August 28) at grunt gallery’s 30th anniversary celebration.

Representing 5,000 hours of labour, it’s all she’s worked on for five years. It’s also the last of its kind for Fiedler.

“This is ultra photo real and I’m completely over it. Instead of capturing reality, from now I’m going to capture feelings,” she said.

“The next tapestry will be of Granville Island and that wonderful feeling of the colours and smells and energy. I’m going to try to capture that in a tapestry. That will be much more difficult.”

Fiedler never imagined she’d become a fibre artist. The idea for her first tapestry came to her one day in the 1980s when she was sitting in her dentist’s office on the 19th floor of a medical building on Broadway. She looked out over the city and thought that she wanted to record how the city looked before Expo 86 changed it.

“I didn’t know how to paint or draw but I knew how to knit,” she said.

“I could paint a picture with yarn and that’s how I came to do the picture with yarn.”

Fiedler’s first big weaving shows a smaller and less detailed view of Vancouver. It was featured on the front page of the Entertainment section of The Vancouver Sun in December of 1983.

At the time, Fielder was a local celebrity known for running Soft Rock Café on West Fourth. A no-alcohol venue with 500 seats and a dance area, it booked in acts as varied as Ravi Shankar, Ramsey Lewis and DOA.

“I didn’t know I would go on for the next 30 years and weave,” she said about her first work. “This was just, I thought, a one off.”

Fiedler is resourceful in finding yarn for weaving. She loves to use fabric from old sweaters that she unravels. Her favourite source for cheap sweaters is Value Village followed by the Salvation Army and St. Vincent de Paul.

“I grew up in the war in London,” said Fielder, 78. “We recycled everything. We made all our own clothes. You knitted your gloves and sweaters and you knitted for your brothers and what have you. It was a way of life.”

She picks fabrics to match the ‘look’ of various buildings. The dome on BC Place, for example, is made from an acrylic that sparkles white as it catches the light. On Granville Island, Bridges Restaurant is depicted with light yellow wool to make it stand out against the blue water of False Creek; on the North Shore, the yellow piles of sulphur are made from a much brighter fabric that pops against the scenic background.

“People always walk up to my tapestries and say: ‘I live there’ or ‘I work there — or ‘I own that building,’ Fiedler said.

“I’ve put in each street and will count the houses: if there are 10 houses on the street, there are 10 little marks. I’m fanatically accurate.”

She starts her weavings from the bottom and works on each building one at a time.

“I think my favourite part are these cranes here,” she said, pointing to the container cranes on the Vancouver waterfront.

“The orange is fantastic against the blue background.”

Fiedler is an entirely self-taught artist. In addition to tapestries of Vancouver, she has made similar realistic weavings of other Olympic cities such as Sydney, Atlanta and Salt Lake City.

What interests her about cities that have hosted the Olympics is the sense of celebration they share. She sees her work as recording the built form of the city at a certain point in time before major international events change it. If you look closely at BC Place in Vancouver Tapestry, for example, it’s the stadium before it had its $514 million renovation.

“The moment they announced they were going to change the stadium roof, I said ‘Thank you, lord!’ you just made my tapestry a historical document,” she said.

Fiedler worked from an aerial photograph of Vancouver on a 2010 Winter Olympics calendar showing False Creek, the downtown peninsula, Burrard Inlet and the North Shore mountains. Fiedler added Chinatown because she said she loves that part of the city.

Unlike other fibre artists who undertake big projects on commission, she doesn’t have a client for Vancouver Tapestry. She’s hoping someone will buy it and keep it in Vancouver.

“This is a snapshot of Vancouver in February, 2010,” she said. “A city changes so quickly after an Olympics. It’s been amazing to be here and watch how many buildings have been built since the Olympics. I’m usually driven by some particular thing that’s going to happen.

“This is how I know how to record it: with yarn.”

Members of the public are invited to grunt gallery’s 30th anniversary celebration today at 6:30 p.m. Vancouver Tapestry will be on display at Mainspace Community Gallery, 116–350 East 2nd Ave., next to grunt gallery until Saturday when Fiedler will give an artist’s talk at 1 p.m.

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.